A full five minutes was consumed in the exchange of profound introductions. This concluded, Mr. Core was informed what the purposes of the Vice Investigation Commission were. The information failed to impress him. Whereupon he was informed that he, as an employer of thousands of girls, had been called to throw light on a vital question. First, what wages did his employes' receive. Mr. Core, raising his eyebrows and looking aggrieved as if he had been asked a very crude and tactless question, replied that the average wage was $10 a week for the young women in his employ. Did he think a young woman could keep virtuous on $10 a week? Alas, he had never given that phase of the economic system any thought. But if his opinion as an individual was worth anything, he would offer the philosophical observation that wages had nothing to do with immorality. A cynical observation. The crowd frowned. It didn't, eh? Lot he knew about it. And on what did he base this cold-blooded point of view? Well, on nothing in particular except his common sense. Indeed! His common sense! Well, well. So he thought that a normal young woman could live on $10 a week, feed, clothe and house herself on $10 a week and never feel tempted to earn more money by sacrificing her virtue? Alas, he had not thought of it in that way. He had merely thought that good young women were good and bad young women were bad. And wages had nothing to do with it. It was human nature. What! Human nature to be bad! Mr. Arthur Core was inclined to a cynicism which, fortunately, the great minds of the nation did not share. Had he ever sought to determine how many good girls there were in his employ? No, but he presumed they were all good. If they weren't he was sorry for them, but it was their own fault. Thus the see-saw continued while the room grew hotter, while people packed against each other listened with distended eyes and opened mouths. Thus the commissioners, recovering from their panic, began to frown with importances. And Basine, still following the instinct in him--the sense of contact he felt with the crowd and situation, played another trump card. The afternoon newspapers were blazoning the news of Mr. Arthur Core. The morning papers would need an equally dramatic morsel. Basine adjourned the session to reconvene at 3 o'clock. The crowd remained. The heat increased. The session reconvened. It was businesslike now. It was running like a machine. No more delays and indecisions. "Call Miss Winona Johnson." Basine sat amid heaps of documents, ledgers and commissioners, in charge. It was he who asked the questions, whose face was the battle-front of the People versus Vice.